There is a comet that promises to be a good one now visible in the early morning in the constellation Bootes. It is predicted to steadily brighten through December and travel from one end of Ursa Major to the other. See the C/2012 K5 thread in the SS Observing forum for more details. And remember--comet predictions can be unreliable.

The comet was easy to spot in my low power wide field eyepiece at 75x. I pumped up the magnification for the sketch just so I could see if there was anything to see, but it's still pretty small. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

I did the sketch at the ep with a 2B pencil on Strathmore paper, adjusted the gamma and levels a little bit, added a little blur, and flipped it digitally to get the correct view.

Good luck if you decide to go for this comet. Since it's a morning comet, you'll be racing the sunrise, so you can't linger.

wow, very interesting tail !
good work. I observed K5 last week ( 14.Nov)with my 10"Dobson.
But he stood very deep( 13° high) in the evening.
The sky was not perfectly clear.
I measured ~ 10.5mag without seeing a tail.

This comes as a surpise to me. I have not been paying attention. Impressive sketch of what looks to be a fine comet. Will be checking this one out.
Love your sketch, it has a Hubble's Variable neb. look to it.

Thanks to all of you for your comments. This comet will be better placed for all northern hemisphere observers as we get into December and January so keep it in mind as a target. I'd love to see other observers take on C/2012 K5, especially if it fulfills its promise.

It will be an whole night comet by the end of December, I believe. I won't have to carry you for too long.

Thanks, Jason.

Btw, I forgot to mention in my original post that I saw the Zodiacal Light while I was waiting for the comet to rise. That was a real bonus but I think would be hard (for me ) to sketch. Anyone have any sketches of the Zodiacal Light?

I've been off the boards for a month due to work and weather. My last observation of C/2012 K5 was November 22nd when it was in Bootes with almost daily solid cloud cover since then so when it cleared off the evening of the 7th (8th UT), I was anxious to get another look at the comet. By now it was in Taurus very near Aldebaran.

I was surprised how bright it was. My GoTo is a little off and put the comet core just outside the field of view but I could see the glow of the coma on the edge of the FOV.

This is a fast mover--probably the fastest I have ever observed. I placed the comet just below the center of the FOV so I could include the tail in my sketch and in a half hour it had moved completely out of view.

Speaking of the tail--it did not appear uniformly diffuse but rather appeared to have streamers.

I did the sketch at the eyepiece with a 2B pencil and a blending stump. It was cold that night--25°F--so I used my chemical hand warmers and fingerless gloves. After scanning I tweaked the gamma and contrast a little, inverted a copy to get the negative, and flipped the drawing for the correct view.

I'll tell you what people--it's getting crowded up there in space. A meteor went through my FOV during this observation followed shortly thereafter by a satellite.

@Aquarellia--I like to show the original and inverted view because, although the inverted view gives a sense of the eyepiece view, some detail is always more visible in the original (black on white) view. Glad you liked it, too.